A prairie witch known as the Antidote is chained to a bed in the Uz jail. The town of Uz, Nebraska, is suffering a drought. The Antidote is what is known as a “Vault”: She has the ability to take other people’s unwanted memories and store them inside herself, as if she were a bank. This causes the depositor to forget the memory entirely until he or she withdraws it from the Antidote. But, as she awakens this morning, the Antidote feels suddenly bankrupt, knowing that she has, for the first time, lost all of the memories she has been storing. She recalls giving birth to a son at the Home for Unwed Mothers in Milford, Nebraska, when she was 15. After the baby was born, she briefly nursed him but then was told that he had died. The Antidote believes this is a lie and assumes her son is alive somewhere.

In 1933, Asphodel—known as Dell—goes to live with her mother’s brother, Harp Oletsky, after her mother, Lada, is murdered. Lada and Dell had been living three hours away on the Nebraska-Kansas border. Dell feels that her uncle blames her for her mother’s death. She is obsessed with basketball and plays constantly, despite the dust, stopping only when Harp forces her to attend Catholic mass with him.

On Sunday, April 14, 1935, a black cloud appears, and the wind picks up.

Harp recalls a government official visiting Uz to show farmers a film explaining the cause of the topsoil erosion. As he drives home from mass, the sky darkens as if night had suddenly fallen. He passes Dell along the road and rushes her into his truck. The dust storm will later be known as “Black Sunday.”

The chapter consists of two short sentences: “I was not annihilated. Whatever ‘I’ was” (24).

The Antidote is rescued from her jail cell by the Sheriff’s wife and daughter, then guided through the dust outside. One of the sheriff’s sons drives her back to the boardinghouse above the saloon, the Country Jentleman, where she lives.

She addresses her narrative to her absent son, explaining how the sheriff frequently brings her to Cell Eight for various criminals to deposit memories. The sheriff does not pay her for this service, instead calling it a tax she must pay in exchange for being permitted to practice witchcraft. The Antidote fears what will happen to her now that her deposits are suddenly gone.

Upon returning to her room, she immediately cleans her conduit: an ear horn. She discovers that someone has placed the foot of a rabbit in her room. A rabbit’s foot is the calling card left beside the bodies killed by a serial killer that plagues Uz. The sheriff has questioned a young transient from Indiana who then confessed to six of the murders and has been sentenced to death. The Antidote, however, is skeptical as to whether he truly committed them.

She sends a telegraph to another prairie witch, inquiring whether she too has lost all her deposits.

After the storm, Dell listens in on the Party Line—a communal telephone line shared by the town—hoping to hear news regarding the execution of the Lucky Rabbit’s Foot Killer: Clemson Louis Dew. He was scheduled to die by electric chair at midnight on April 15, but the dust caused a kind of interference with the electricity, causing Dew to survive, despite the hood over his head catching fire. The execution is now postponed indefinitely.

Harp orders Dell off the phone, and they play basketball on a hoop he has installed for her outside, shooting until it grows dark.

Harp explains to Dell that the name of the town, Uz, was taken from the Book of Job. He recalls being convinced by a John Deere salesman to buy a tractor on credit in the early 1920s. Harp has not, however, been able to make a profit since then: The dust and his debt continue to grow.

The scarecrow hears a man marvel at its having survived the Black Sunday storm intact.

The Antidote borrows a horse to travel to the home of her friend, Cherry, a fellow prairie witch who, along with the Antidote, apprenticed under a vault named Kettle. As she rides, the Antidote recalls fleeing the Milford Home for Unwed Mothers after giving birth, then meeting Kettle. She took her name from a sign she saw at a circus.

At Cherry’s cabin, there is no sign of her. The Antidote sits down on Cherry’s bed, fearing that she has no one left in the world.

Dell visits her best friend Valeria—the center on the basketball team. When Dell confesses that she has been kept awake at night by dreams of her mother, Valeria suggests that Dell make a deposit with the Antidote. She herself has done so twice and plans to withdraw the memories when she is older. Valeria speculates that Dell might even learn to become a vault, which could earn her a great deal of money.

At the next day’s practice, the team’s numbers have dwindled: Many families have moved away from Uz because of the dust. A team member named Abby died two days previously because of the effects of the dust on her asthma. The coach announces that not only has the team lost its sponsorship, but he is leaving town too.

The remaining team members vote to continue playing, nominating Dell as their player-coach. Though she does not tell the other girls, Dell is contemplating becoming a prairie witch to earn money.

Harp’s neighbor, Otto, visits. They discuss the Black Sunday storm, and Harp shows Otto the scarecrow. Otto does not share Harp’s amazement at the scarecrow’s remaining intact, but he marvels at Harp’s wheat—miraculously lush and healthy. Neither of them can explain this.

After Otto leaves, Harp thinks of the vault his father took him to as a child. He recalls, too, the death of his brother Frank by suicide after returning from service in World War I. This, coupled with his sister’s death, leads Harp to believe that the Oletsky family is cursed.

The scarecrow notes that Harp visits every day. It notices the plants growing around it and the tumbleweed that passes by.

The Antidote leaves Cherry’s house and returns to Uz. Waiting for her at her room is Dell, who has had a dream about the Antidote’s earhorn and believes that she too may be a vault. She asks to be the Antidote’s apprentice. The Antidote protests, but Dell goes on, explaining who she is and telling the Antidote of the death of her mother. The Antidote gives in, allowing Dell to stay.

Dell wakes before the Antidote and prepares breakfast. When the Antidote wakes, Dell persists in trying to convince her to allow Dell to become her apprentice. The Antidote decides to give Dell a diagnostic test: she gives Dell the earhorn and instructs her to attempt to enter a trance while the Antidote makes a deposit. Though Dell is unable to enter a trance state, she insists that she can learn to do so. She is certain that she became a prairie witch when her mother died.

Otto notes that Harp did not return home after basketball practice the previous night. He has noticed a strange light—a kind of radiant halo—appearing above his field each day since the Black Sunday storm. He is unsure whether it is real or a hallucination and decides to keep it a secret.

The scarecrow feels a seed in the ground beneath, beginning to grow.

The Antidote explains that she was sent to the Milford Home for Unwed Mothers when she was three months pregnant at the age of 15. All the women and girls living there were required to stay for a minimum of 12 months, regardless of when they gave birth. They were given false names—the Antidote’s was “Anne Fayeweather”—and held to a strict schedule of work. The Antidote was repeatedly ordered to be grateful to be at the Home, but she was grateful only for the other expectant mothers.

The Antidote’s real name, she explains, is Antonina Teresa Rossi. She was called Nedda by the grandmother who raised her and later Toni by her friends. She immigrated from Sicily as an infant, her mother already having died. When she was three, her older brother and father died in a fire. Her grandmother, whom she adored, then died of bone cancer. The Antidote, then called Nedda, was sent to live with a neighbor whom she refers to as the Guardian. She found the Guardian cruel but loved the Guardian’s son, Giancarlo. It was the Guardian who realized before the Antidote ever did that the teen girl was pregnant by Giancarlo. The Guardian brought the Antidote to the courthouse, where she was then sentenced to one year at the Milford Home for Unwed Mothers.